"Thud"
His heart suddenly leaped as if punched hard. Su Han abruptly sat upright, his hand swinging instinctively, knocking over the water glass on the desk and soaking the entire keyboard.
He immediately woke up, muttering "damn it" under his breath, then quickly righted the water glass and propped the keyboard against the screen to prevent more water from seeping in, before pulling out heaps of tissues to dry the desk.
After tidying up the mess, Su Han rubbed the center of his brows, the sleepiness in his eyes finally easing slightly.
"Either postgraduate studies or switching jobs, otherwise reviewing contracts all night, every day, who can endure that."
Having saved the reviewed contract and sent it out via email, Su Han finally leaned back in his chair to rest, feeling a bit irritated and still a bit oppressed.
He had stayed up all night reviewing contracts and had fallen asleep at the desk in his room.
Indistinctly, he seemed to have dreamt too, with darkness descending boundlessly, he found himself suffocating under the surrounding atmosphere.
There was clearly nothing, yet it felt like someone was watching him.
His heart thudded more heavily and deeply each time, as if it were drumming, then suddenly someone seemed to grasp it.
He woke up abruptly, likely a sign of sudden death.
Earning money is important, but life is more so, Su Han felt it necessary to schedule a health check.
He picked up his phone from the desk, intending to quickly search for causes of heart palpitations, perhaps even needing to register at a clinic if there was time.
[Fog!!!]
He had just turned on his phone and suddenly noticed that all platforms were tagged with the same trending search that inexplicably just read "Fog".
"Red fog alert!"
"The thickest fog in a century!"
"Fog wall"
"Seige"
"Eerie, fog blankets the entire country!"
...
Su Han scrolled through several messages, feeling somewhat astonished, wondering what sort of fog could trend like that.
He walked to the window in his room, pulling open the curtains that were usually kept shut.
"Whoosh"
As he drew the curtains, his eyes were met with a swath of gray-white, thick to the extreme.
The dense fog enveloped the city like a vast cover, swallowing the edges and blanketing everything in a haze.
Oddly, the gray fog did not invade the city, but enveloped just the edges and several hundred meters above, like a gray heavy helmet laid upon the city sky.
Oppressive, uneasy, just like the boundless darkness in his dream.
This didn't seem like fog, but more like an unknown, terrifying monster.
"No wonder they call it eerie, is this really still a natural phenomenon?"
Su Han could only see this as an extremely peculiar event, which inevitably led him to recall historical fog-related incidents.
The 1952 London "Fog Event", where a fog enveloped London, causing severe pollution that resulted in 4,000 deaths.
"What is that!"
Exclamations rose one after another; the voices came from his building and the nearby streets.
Su Han hurriedly looked out, shocked to see a vast red mark vertically spanning the gray fog in the sky, emanating a sinister red.
'That must be thousands of meters long at least, what on earth is it?'
The feeling of unease inside him intensified, and instinctively, he felt a heavy oppression.
The gray fog began to churn, like boundless ocean waves, descending from above and shrouding the entire city, dwarfing skyscrapers and streets under its mighty presence, swallowed in the haze.
He wanted to check his phone for information to see if anyone knew what was happening, but when he looked down, he was startled.
The phone signal was lost, the screen flickered continuously, black wavy patterns appeared, and in an instant, the screen went dark.
And at that moment, the red mark in the sky started to move.
It slowly opened, finally revealing its true form — a gigantic, eerie red eyeball.
Blood-red in color, its pupil was vertical like that of a wild beast.
Cold, indifferent, it swiftly enveloped the entire city.
Everyone under this presence instinctively felt an indescribable fear, their bodies trembling slightly, yet unable to move.
The giant eyeball moved, and suddenly, a dazzling red light burst forth, expanding rapidly from the center towards the ground.
Su Han tried to dodge, pulling the curtain shut, but his body couldn't move. The red light spread faster than the sprawling fog, reaching him in an instant.
In a moment, even though he was inside the room, the red light still enveloped his body.
"Thump" "Thump" "Thump"
His heartbeat intensified, a severe pain throbbing through him, almost making him curl up and fall to the floor, his face turned red and veins bulging as his heart pounded heavily.
The giant eyeball glanced over the entire city, then gradually closed into a red line, and finally vanished into the mist.
At that moment, the surging fog finally swallowed the entire city, leaving nothing but a gray haze outside the window, where even a silhouette five meters away could barely be discerned.
Almost fainting, the red light on Su Han's body continued to converge, slowly settling on his left hand, transforming into a red page mark.
His heartbeat slowly returned to normal, Su Han barely managed to pull through, gasping for breath heavily.
"What the hell is this?!"
He could feel an unknown power swirling inside him, and his instincts told him that if he couldn't endure, something terrible was bound to happen.
Barely supporting himself against the wall, he stood up when suddenly the red page faintly emitted a red glow, countless pieces of information flooded into Su Han's mind.
After a long while, the red glow quietly faded, and he only snapped back to his senses, with one thought in his mind—the situation had escalated drastically.
"The Book of Blood Spirit"
Su Han looked down at the marking, with the red glow flowing and the bizarre nature hard to comprehend, all sourced from the power of a disembodied eyeball scattered around this world.
A power granted to all those who had survived.
When he focused his thoughts on it, his consciousness would descend into the space of consciousness.
In the boundless pitch-black space, an old, gigantic book of blood-red sheepskin floated.
The Book of Blood Spirit had only one page, blank without any recorded content.
It had only one function—Contract.
One page of the Book of Blood Spirit could contract an Angel Envoy, granting the host the power to control the Angel Envoy.
This was the 'gift' that the eyeball gave to everyone.
Su Han withdrew his consciousness from the space of consciousness and then tried to calm his breathing as much as possible.
The radiation range of the eyeball is at least the entirety of Canglan City, but if the grey fog and the eyeball were part of the same supernatural phenomenon, then the whole country might be in trouble."
The spread of the red glow and the gray fog determined the reaction speed of the officials and whether there would still be a response.
Severed communications, fog obscuring vision, the supernatural power of the Book of Blood Spirit, and then there were the monsters...
The Book of Blood Spirit could contract monsters to become Angel Envoys. The Book of Blood Spirit had already manifested into reality, but what about the monsters?
Su Han felt an uneasy premonition. The Book of Blood Spirit was likely just the beginning. The grey fog seemed to devour people, and no one knew what was hidden inside it.
"I can't just sit here and wait for death. I need to find food and weapons, to ensure I can survive. I must treat this as if it's the apocalypse."
Su Han drew the curtains. Though the glass prevented the fog from spreading into the room, the hazy fog still felt uncomfortable.
"Crack, crack, crack"
Just then, a strange noise came from outside his room door, resembling the sound of crushing instant noodles, but deeper, heavier, as if it were not noodles being broken, but human joints.
The eerie sound made Su Han alert and somewhat hair-raising. He picked up a fruit knife from the table.
Perhaps this was one of the benefits of sharing accommodation—most of his personal belongings were in his room, such as the stainless steel fruit knife with a blade longer than ten centimeters.
Approaching the door, Su Han's grip on the knife tightened. He quietly opened a crack in the door and stealthily looked towards the living room where the sound originated.
The sight startled him, causing his pupils to rapidly constrict.
In the living room was none other than his roommate, Yang Tian. He was dressed in a simple white T-shirt and jeans, standing in the middle of the living room.
The "crack" strange noise originated from his body.
His hair rapidly fell out, his back arched in a bizarre posture, twisted like a worm's bulge, bending, hunching with his arms elongating unnaturally, hanging down as if being forcibly stretched, full of grotesqueness and mismatch with claws sharp past the knees.
He looked just like a monster. The cracking noise came from his distorted bones. At that moment, the sound stopped, and a quiet, low rumbling could be faintly heard.
Su Han held his breath, feeling chilled to the bone. This definitely was no longer human.
No person could suddenly appear like this, with twisted bones and skin pale as death.
Swish!
Just then, 'Yang Tian' suddenly turned around, his horrifying face directly facing the crack of Su Han's door.
It was a face covered in blood-vessel-like purple veins, horrifyingly pale eyes meeting Su Han's gaze through the crack of the door.
"Roar"
He let out a low roar, the sound excitedly showing his sharp teeth as he snarled.
Having spotted Su Han, the monster rushed over like a beast sensing its prey.
This is bad!
A chill rushed to his crown. Su Han immediately tried to block the door, just managing to close it without locking it.
A massive force pushed the door open three inches, a long pale arm reaching straight in through the crack, clawing around.
How could it be so strong?!
Su Han desperately held the door closed, armed only with a small knife. If he let 'Yang Tian' in, his end wouldn't be far off.
The struggle, mediated by the door, had begun. The monster desperately tried to get in, while Su Han desperately held the door closed.
However, in terms of strength, the monster had the upper hand, and the crack in the door gradually widened.
Su Han could feel his strength draining, and he knew he couldn't match the endurance of the monster.
All or nothing!
With a resolve, he slightly loosened his grip, allowing the crack to widen slightly as the monster squeezed half of its body through.
At that moment, he exerted force again, wedging his body sideways against the door, trapping 'Yang Tian'. His knife stabbed wildly towards the head.
Once
Twice
Thrice
....
In the life-and-death crisis, Su Han didn't know where the strength came from, but he pierced through 'Yang Tian's' eyes.
He didn't know how many times he had stabbed; his hand was cut by the handle and blade, the stinging pain sobering him somewhat as his strength also ebbed away at that moment.
'Yang Tian' remained motionless. After Su Han released his strength, he slid through the crack of the door.
[A meat corpse has been killed. Contract the meat corpse as an Angel Envoy?]
The Book of Blood Spirit faintly glowed red, and a message reached Su Han's consciousness.